£10m fund will help revive upland areas
Projects to protect wildlife and people
A new £10m fund to accelerate the restoration of the country’s precious peatland habitats can make a “huge difference” to the revival of degraded swathes of upland landscapes over the next three years, conservationists say. Fresh investment will be available to conservation bodies over three years from May.
A NEW £10m fund to accelerate the large-scale restoration of the country’s precious peatland habitats can make a “huge difference” to the revival of degraded swathes of upland landscapes over the next three years, conservationists have said.
Fresh government investment will be available to conservation bodies over three years from the start of May, including the Yorkshire Peat Partnership, which has worked to restore around a quarter of the region’s damaged peatlands over much of the last decade.
Nationally, peatlands cover 11 per cent of England’s landscape and provide habitats for birds such as the merlin, dunlin and golden plover. They also supply 70 per cent of England’s drinking water, by filtering water that then drains into rivers and reservoirs, and they store more greenhouse gas than all of the country’s woodlands and forests combined.
Historically, government policy has seen much of the peatland in England drained to improve land for livestock grazing, and more recently it has encouraged more heather growth to provide cover and food for grouse.
But there are now efforts to make the uplands far more diverse, through the selective cutting and removal of areas of heather, and the subsequent introduction of peat forming mosses to try and make the moors wetter.
The new funding that is due to be released to wildlife trusts and charity projects from next month will be targeted at sites with the greatest potential for achieving greenhouse gas reductions through the re-wetting of mosses and the restoration of peatland habitats.
Environment Minister Thérèse Coffey said: “Peatlands are an iconic aspect of the English landscape which are not only a haven for wildlife but also provide us with clean water and help reduce greenhouse emissions.
“This funding will help restore thousands of hectares of this precious habitat to its natural state and is a key part of our ambition to be the first generation to leave the natural environment in a better state than we found it.”
Founded in 2009, The Yorkshire Peat Partnership is an umbrella organisation comprising of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, Natural England, North York Moors National Park Authority and the Environment Agency.
It aims to restore and conserve upland peat landscapes across the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors National Parks, the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and areas of the South Pennines.
Within Yorkshire alone, there are nearly 70,000 hectares of upland peat soil, upon which more than four million metres of drainage channels have been dug which equates to almost the same distance between Halifax in West Yorkshire and Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Rob Stoneman, chairman of the Partnership, and chief executive of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust welcomed the new government funding.
Mr Stoneman said: “It is crucial this natural capital is conserved, yet in the past we have seen great damage inflicted on this habitat, with over 80 per cent of UK peatlands recorded as degraded. This new fund will make a huge difference to restoring these damaged English peatlands back to a healthy, functioning state.”
The conservationist, who is also chairman of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s UK Peatland Programme, added: “This is excellent news for English peatlands - they are our largest area of semi-natural habitat and provide many important services, including drinking water provision, flood mitigation solutions, carbon storage and homes for rare wildlife.”
It is crucial this natural capital is conserved. Rob Stoneman, chairman of the Yorkshire Peat Partnership